Tuesday

Sep 10, 2019 at 7:35 PMSep 10, 2019 at 7:55 PM

The nation's official poverty rate dropped further last year, but household income unexpectedly stalled, and the share of people without health insurance went up for the first time since the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2013, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — The nation's official poverty rate dropped further last year, but household income unexpectedly stalled, and the share of people without health insurance went up for the first time since the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2013, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday.

The inflation-adjusted median income — the midpoint at which half of households make more and half make less — essentially flattened after three straight years of growth, which is puzzling. The economy grew at a good clip last year and, as the census report showed, there were 2.3 million more full-time, year-round workers. The median earnings of all such workers went up a solid 3.4% from 2017.

Census officials couldn't offer a detailed explanation, saying only that their household income measure includes a variety of pre-tax income, and sometimes the total number doesn't line up with employment earnings trends. The census income figure includes such things as money from rent, pensions and Social Security benefits. Also, the biggest income gains last year were seen in households headed by younger adults.

Still, Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, called the stall in the median income "troubling." He said it could be that the increase in full-time workers did not represent the middle-income worker, or that something else was going on to lower their income.

Whatever the reason, Holzer said, the census data indicated that households in the middle saw little income improvement when the overall economy was doing well.

What's more, despite the large increase in full-time workers, at least some of whom would have gotten employer-covered health insurance, the Census Bureau found that the percentage of U.S. residents who went without medical insurance last year rose to 8.5% from 7.9% in 2017.

It was the first such increase since the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, led to sharp declines in the uninsured rate, which was previously reported as 14.5% in 2013 before the full effect of the act in 2014. Health insurance coverage is considered an important measure of economic well-being.

Last year's erosion of gains from Obamacare, however, was not a surprise, given the Trump administration's moves to weaken his predecessor's key domestic achievement.

The census report found that the percentage of people covered by Medicaid — the government's health care program for lower-income families and individuals — dropped by 0.7 percentage point to 17.9%. By comparison, people on Medicare, the public insurance for the elderly, rose by 0.4 percentage point to 17.8%.

The administration cut outreach programs and supported new state policies making it harder to enroll in Medicaid, according to experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank.

"When the economy is about as good as it gets, those at the bottom don't gain if government doesn't do something to help them," said Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, which supports research on poverty and other social and economic issues.

The census report showed the nation's median income was $63,179 last year, up less than 1% from 2017 — a change that was considered statistically insignificant.

Median household income jumped more than 5% in 2015 but since then has been moderate or essentially flat.

The government's traditional poverty measure, meanwhile, dropped 0.5 percentage point last year to 11.8%. It was the fourth consecutive year of decline and the first time that the poverty level was significantly lower than 2007. The Great Recession began in late 2007 and officially ended in mid-2009.

The number of people in poverty in 2018 was 38.1 million, 1.4 million fewer people than 2017.

People falling below the poverty threshold — less than $25,465 for a family of two adults and two children — were almost certainly helped by the growing number of jobs and higher minimum wages in different parts of the country.

Economic growth, however, has moderated this year. Through August, employers on average added 158,000 new jobs a month, a still-healthy level that is more than enough to absorb the growing labor force population, but down from 223,000 jobs a month last year.

"The official poverty report offers good news," said H. Luke Shaefer, director of the University of Michigan's Poverty Solutions initiative, noting that it was the lowest rate since 2001, when it was just a notch lower at 11.7%.

Households headed by women in particular, he said, have the lowest official poverty rate ever recorded for that group.

"These are good signs at this stage of a long economic expansion," Shaefer said. But he added that deep poverty — those with incomes below half the poverty line — remains high at 5.3%.

Moreover, he and other analysts noted that the Census Bureau's supplemental or alternative poverty rate saw no statistical improvement last year. That poverty level was 13.1% last year, similar to 2017.

Many analysts consider that measure more accurate because it includes non-cash benefits such as food stamps and earned income tax credits.

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